


Woken with a Kiss

by Corycides



Category: The Tomorrow People (2013)
Genre: F/M, Kinkmeme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 16:17:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephen was in Cara's head; John wanted into Astrid's - it was only fair</p>
            </blockquote>





	Woken with a Kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Penndragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penndragon/gifts).



It hadn’t been the beatings or the experiments that had been the worst; it had been the kindness. He’d been so...grateful.

‘If you’d stop fighting me,’ Jedikiah said, crouching next to him on the floor. ‘We could stop hurting you, John.’

The flannel was wet and cool against John’s face, soaking the scabbed warts of blood until they picked loose. He shuddered with relief and sucked at the sour runnels of water, moisture stinging the dry, cracked bit of leather that was his tongue.

‘Sorry,’ he croaked, voice a rasp that he didn’t think would ever come back. ‘I’m sorry.’

* * *

 

John woke up with flinch, body and heart aching with phantom memory and guilt heavy in his chest. He reached out for Cara and just found more phantoms, her heat and scent lingering on the sheets. Gone. His fingers clenched, twisting in the sheets until he felt them rip.

Temper, temper. It was Jedikiah’s voice in his head, mildly amused and ready to hurt him. John made his fingers relax, stroking his thumb over the sundered threads and knitting them back together with his TK. The use of his powers cooled his temper as well, the dispassionate rationality of that part of his brain flooding through him.

Sheets virgin once more he slouched back into the nest of pillows and let his mind...diffuse. His sense of himself, his awareness, unfolded out, rippling through walls and throughout the old subway station. It touched, identified, engulfed the other Tomorrow People. The newbies sitting in silence, bruised and still half scared this was some strange joke (half scared it wasn’t) and Russell eating candy (brain popping with light as the sweetness hit his tongue) and watching 2001 Space Odyssey with Hal and Gwennie having another nightmare about her parents turning out to be Ultras. He stopped long enough to smooth her fear out, depressing her brainwaves until they forgot she was afraid.

Usually the other Tomorrow People could sense each other’s telepathy. Usually they just used it to communicate. They hadn’t had the...benefit...of Jedikiah’s rigorous training regime.

He didn’t find Cara. He found a space in the corner of subway where his mind couldn’t infiltrate. Encapsulated, warded - private.

Anger shattered his detachment and his control, consciousness rubber band snapping back into his skull. Pain blistered in black bubbles through his mind for a second, until he shrugged it off. Getting out of bed he scrambled into his jeans, yanking the worn denim up over his hips and went prowling through the subway.

‘The promised land’, Cara called the place Jameson had gone looking for. John respected the older man - certainly more than he did his son - but this was his promised land. The subway was the first place he’d been safe, his home. It had kept them safe for years, he’d kept them safe - so why did they have to (want to) leave?

Why did they need him?

He reached the sealed off room. They’d not bothered on the physical plane, not caring who say them - after all it wasn’t as if they were doing anything the Saps would see as intimate. It was just too people sitting on the floor, mediating.

Except it was more than that, they were sharing minds. Touching in ways more intimate than flesh. John could see the flickering micro-expressions of pleasure and affection across Cara’s face; Stephen’s unabashed adoration impossible to miss.

They shared a bond.

He was losing her.

The air rippled around him and he was gone.

* * *

 

Jumping blind had its risks. You were running on impulse and subconscious desires - and your subconscious didn’t always like you that much. John landed in the dark in a room that smelt like pomegranates, powder and girl. He crouched on the carpet, blinking in the dark till his eyes adjusted, and wondered why here. Whoever the pomegranate girl was, she was human. He could feel the difference in her brain.

Posters of boy bands on the wall and a stereotypically ‘well-loved’ teddy bear lying on the floor, tossed out of bed. She was asleep, sprawled out like a starfish on the bed, and now that he could see….

Ah, her.

 

It was only fair. Equitable, another Jedikiah word. It balanced the scales - if Stephen was in Cara’s head, then John should be in Astrid. He’d read about her in Stephen’s psych-report - his best friend, after the break out his only friend. His lodestar as his mind was remaking itself, his guide into behaving normal enough to get by.

John didn’t have a psych report - not one that Jedikiah would let anyone see - so Stephen had no way of knowing that had been what Cara was to John. After he escaped the Ultras (he had, he was sure he had) she had been the one who gave him a reason to play pretend, pretend he was normal, pretend Jedikiah hadn't cracked him open and glued him back together with the sharp edges showing,

An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A girl for a girl. That made sense.

* * *

 

She played soccer. John sprawled in the bleachers, legs stretched out in front of him and arms hooked over the back of the bench. He looked as out of place among the cheering parents and sap teens as a shark among clown fish. It made people uncomfortable (they can tell you aren't like them, they can tell you are a predator), but the few who got up the balls to complain he pathed into changing their mind,

’Don't cause a scene, just a kid watching a game. Nothing to see here - I should mind my own.'

He could have done something more universal, kick a thought construct out into the mimetic under space and let it convince the nearby saps he was just the normalest of norms. It was just a lot of work for something so short lived.

Sourness twitched his mouth. Perhaps Stephen would be their saviour there too, work out a way to generate a construct that wouldn't be harvested by the indigenous memes of the Underspace. Then they could just tell the saps they were their new best friends, turn this world into their promised land.

Until then, though, John would stick to reprogramming one sap at a time. It was good practice, and didn't take much of his attention away from the field. From her. He could care less about Saps games with balls.

She dashed across the pitch, long legs bare and toned and her hair already free of its ponytail and bouncing exuberantly around her shoulders. Usually she didn't get the ball, if by some accident she did, she didn't keep it. John had the feeling she wasn't particularly good at the game.

Cara didn't play games - there was no time for them when you were running and hiding and fighting. She was beautiful when she fought, though, poised and flawless and deadly. She never tripped over her own feet and lay on the grass, breathless and laughing in the sun.

Astrid looked happy...carefree...and John didn’t know if he hated or envied her for that. What he did know was that he wanted her under him, lust cramping hot and hard and unexpected in his balls. It hadn’t been about her, it had been about taking something away from Stephen. Now it was about her.

* * *

 

Apparently, the Ultra Foundation was a demanding employer. For the third time that week, his phone rang straight through to voicemail. Working for his uncle was good for him - he’d not had an ‘incident’ in weeks and the neighbours were talking to his mom again - but Astrid kinda missed him. She’d kinda, sorta, maybe hoped that once he was feeling better they could...see. They’d kissed once, giggling and dared at the prompt of the bottle, and it been nice and they’d both - she thought - liked it. Only then Stephen had gotten sick (for a while Astrid had harboured the sick niggle of doubt that she’d done it somehow) and it hadn’t exactly been a good time for anything like that.

Orrrrrrrr...maybe he just didn’t like her that. That was ok, she supposed as she flopped back onto the bed. She just hoped they were still friends.

‘Astrid!’ her mother yelled from downstairs. ‘I’m going for coffee with Marla. If Stephen is coming over...’

The pause was all the rules that her mom had come up with since she realised that her daughter’s best friend was a boy and then added to once they’d both hit puberty. Don’t close doors, don’t spend time upstairs, and please don’t get pregnant and make all my mistakes over again.

‘He’s not!’ Astrid yelled back down, rolling her eyes. ‘He’s at work.’

‘Then just be good, don’t burn the house down!’

The front door slammed and Astrid reached for her headphones, drowning her mope out under Katy Perry. Halfway through the third song, she started to yawn.

* * *

 

Music thumped in the background, Robin Thicke being vile and annoyingly catchy at one and the same time, and Astrid leaned in to take her turn spinning the bottle. It rattled against Mrs Salinger's new wood floor four times, five times and stopped on...not Stephen. The wet mouth of the whiskey bottle pointed at a tall, blond guy sitting opposite her.

That wasn't...right? It hadn't happened like this, had it?

Astrid glanced uncertainly at Stephen, but he was staring at a dark, model pretty girl that Astrid didn't know either. Had they come together? If they had, the girl didn't care that her boyfriend was crawling over the floor to Astrid.

'I spin the bottle, I kiss you. Right?' he asked, pausing with his hands on her knees.

'Um, yes,' Astrid said, glancing around again. No one was paying any attention, they seemed to have forgotten the game. His hands slid further...she was dreaming, it was a dream. 'I guess those are the rules.'

She leaned down and kissed him, mouth soft and hair tangling around both their faces. He sucked her lower lip, teeth scraping over the gloss, and ran his hands up to the flirty hem of her skirt. Yellow flowers on black silk - but she’d been wearing that yesterday, not...now. His thumbs stroked the insides of her thighs, tracing circles on her skin with confident intimacy. It made her breath catch, tremors of heat fluttering up through her nerves to catch in her stomach.

His hands didn’t stray any further, but his tongue and lips traced the outline of her mouth like he was learning it. It was her who deepened the kiss, curling her hands around the back of his neck. Her fingers tangled in the short scruff of blond hair, her thumbs laid along the stubble-rough line of his jaw.

Long, rough fingers tightened possessively on her thighs and then he pushed her down, sprawling out on top of her. He bit at her lips, chewing her lip gloss off, and his hands roamed up from her hips to the curve of her breasts. Astrid gasped, suddenly uncertain - there were people watching, and the world shattered around.

When it reformed the party had turned into a club. Music thumping and bodies gyrating in the smoky, strobe lit dark. The floor was a wall and he was pushing her against it, the warm weight of his body leaning against her.

‘Where-’

He kissed her lower lip, suckling on the soft curve of it. ‘Now no-one is watching.’

She laughed against his mouth and wrapped her leg around his hip, the heel of her sneaker digging into the hard muscle of his thigh. It made him shudder and growl, a low, rough noise in the back of his throat.

‘Kiss me again,’ she said.

* * *

 

Her lips tasted like candy, a cordial of sweet gloss smeared over John’s mouth and tongue, and her mind was all sunshine and quirky corners. There were shadows - everyone had shadows - but no true darkness. It felt like sunshine on cracked bones, heat soaking down into places you didn’t know were hurting.

It was her choice. He was in her dream, but it was her choice. He wasn’t influencing her. The music would be better if he was.

He pulled her close until she was straddling his thigh. Hunger glaze big, dark eyes as she rolled her hips against him, hard muscle of his leg rubbing against the core of her.

'I always wanted to do this,' she murmured against his mouth. 'It never seemed a very good idea.'

Her mouth well-kissed, John kissed his way down the smooth line of her throat to her collarbone. The dip of bone filled with his breath and his tongue, while he slid his hand up to cup her breast through a silky fine top. Finger and thumb tweaked the bud of her nipple to pebble tightness, his mouth dry with wanting to taste it and his cock aching hard in his jeans.

'And now it does?' he teased.

'It’s a dream,' she said, voice muzzy with lust. Her fingers flexed in his hair, digging into his scalp. 'It doesn't count.'

John was surprised how much he didn't like hearing that. He let his mouth trail down the soft skin of her chest and closed his mouth over her nipple, sucking it through silk. The fabric was cold and slick against his tongue, when he wanted skin-warmth and texture. His want pushed at the shared moment and it fluttered, silk wisping away into nothing. His lips closed around the firm, warm bud of her nipple, teeth scraping the tender skin and tongue laving the offense away. The sharp whimper, hooked from somewhere down deep in Astrid’s chest, was his reward.

No.

Rules of the game. It was only fair. He kissed her nipple regretfully and put her top back the way it had been. She gasped raggedly and twisted her hands in his shirt, pushing him down onto his knees. He chuckled at her forwardness, kissing his way up the toned, smooth skin of her thighs. Her legs buckled as he pressed his mouth against her, tongue lapping against the soaked lace and silk. Soft, eager noises mewled out of her and her fingers kneaded at his shoulders in encouragement. He stroked his hands up the back of her legs, cupping her bottom to hold her up, and licked and kissed her as she arched into his mouth.

Climax shuddered through her and - she woke up. The dreamscape shimmered alteration, replacing Astrid with a passable facsimile and the details of the club blurring grey under a patina of cynical disinterest. Even the taste of her on his tongue went flat and empty, reminded that it was only his best guess.

He sat back on his heels and rubbed his hand over his mouth, remembering the way Astrid whimpered and clutched at him. Dream sex had its disadvantages, and you always had - he opened his eyes in his own bed - to sort out your own happy endings. He stretched out in his bed, kicking the tangled sheets off his legs, and reached down to his cock. Callused fingers scraped over sensitive skin, pleasure twitching cramps through his stomach and legs. It was rough and unceremonious, impatient. He wanted someone else’s hands on him, not his own.

Soft fingers, soft voice - softness. Astrid didn’t have an edge, hadn’t had all the gentleness scraped off her and the edges sharpened. She was human, a sap.

An edged smile twisted over his mouth as he came, wet on his fingers and over his thighs. Oh, Jedikiah would hate that. Humans were off limits. No...fraternisation between the species. Even after he’d...adjusted out the possibility of cross-breeding,

John wiped his hands on his stomach and licked his lips. He’d got in her head. It wasn’t enough.


End file.
